Policing their vehicles

Published 10:41 pm Saturday, April 12, 2008

Editor’s note: This is the first of a two-part series. The second part will focus on vehicles assigned to Dalton city employees outside the police department.



Many of us have driven rental cars at one time or another. And some of us may not treat them with quite the same amount of care that we do vehicles that we own.

Local law enforcement officials say they noticed a similar principle at work when it comes to the cars driven by their officers and deputies. The Dalton Police Department and Whitfield County Sheriff’s Office both moved away from the pooled vehicle concept years ago, and both now assign cars to patrol officers and certain other members of the departments.

“If you have a piece of equipment assigned to you as an individual, you know from day to day that if something happens to that piece of equipment that no one else is responsible for that damage but you,” said Dalton Police Chief Jason Parker.

“You also know that when you come to work, that if that piece of equipment is in good shape and going to work is up to you,” he added.

Parker said that in 2001, the department began assigning cars to individual officers. The officers are responsible for them 24 hours a day.

Prior to that, the department used a common pool for vehicles. Officers simply checked a car out of the pool each day when they began their shift. Parker says patrol cars, in particular, were driven 16 hours or more each day, running up large numbers of miles and large maintenance costs.

The department currently has 74 vehicles, mostly patrol cars, assigned to officers.

According to data provided by the department, the switch has drastically cut maintenance costs for the department’s fleet. A department study found the per-mile maintenance costs for pooled vehicles was 7 cents. The average per-mile maintenance costs for assigned cars is 3 cents.

Parker says the switch to assigned vehicles was just part of a larger move by the department towards providing individual equipment.

“Twenty-five years ago, we had five or six walkie-talkies for the department. At the end of a shift, we met at the back door, same with the cars, and swapped equipment,” he said. “Gradually, we began issuing individual equipment — flashlights and radios. We found that when an individual is responsible for a piece of equipment, the maintenance costs almost go away. We find that the life of the equipment goes a longer way.”

Parker says the department used to have to replace a patrol car every two or three years. Now, the minimum replacement time is eight years.

“We’ve got some cars in the fleet today that are nine years old and have 179,000 miles on them,” he said. “That’s a little bit high.”

The Whitfield County Sheriff’s Office has been assigning vehicles since the mid-1990s, and it currently has about 64 assigned vehicles. Most are patrol vehicles. Patrol officers work seven days on and seven off.

“They have the vehicle for the seven days they are on duty. When they are off, they exchange it with another officer, or it stays idle,” said Maj. John Gibson.

The officer gets the same car back when he returns to duty.

Gibson wasn’t able to provide numbers, but he said the switch to assigned vehicles has cut maintenance costs.

“I can say that for the last several years the line item in our budget for vehicle maintenance has been flat,” he said.

“When a vehicle is assigned to one or two individuals, we know who is responsible for the wear and tear,” he said. “When you’ve got a pool vehicle, unless you do a daily inspection, a lot of things get overlooked.”

“We’ve got a number of vehicles with over 200,000 miles, and some with over 300,000 miles,” Gibson said.

Parker says reducing maintenance costs wasn’t the only reason the police department switched to assigned vehicles. He says the policy increases the department’s visibility when officers are driving to and from work.

Both Parker and Gibson point to instances in which officers driving to and from work have responded to calls, but they couldn’t quantify how often that happens.

“If (a deputy) drives by something that requires action and does nothing, that can result in disciplinary action. That’s why this program is in place,” said Gibson. “I encourage your readers. Anytime they are on the side of the road, their car has broken down, and they see one of our patrol cars drive by and not stop, they need to notify us.”

An examination of the home addresses of officers assigned vehicles by the Dalton Police Department finds that about 70 percent live in Whitfield County. The rest live in surrounding counties.

“The current mileage limit is 25 miles (to work),” said Parker.

The sheriff’s office doesn’t have a mileage limit, but it limits those with assigned cars to Whitfield County or counties that border Whitfield.

Six cars have been assigned to deputies who live in Murray County, two to deputies who live in Walker County, and two to deputies in Catoosa County.

Gibson says that as gasoline prices rise, the sheriff’s office is keeping a closer eye on the costs of assigned cars to make sure that remains viable.

But both he and Parker say the costs of allowing officers to take cars home has to be balanced not just against possible increased maintenance costs and the effects of response time but other factors.

“We’d have to be able to store all the vehicles, as well as provide space for all of the civilian cars of our employees,” said Gibson. “We have limited space here (at the jail.) We’ve got 80 correctional employees who are already parking their cars here, and on the weekends when we have visitation, the parking lot is just jammed.”

Parker says his department’s fleet is managed by one person in the department along with one person from the Dalton public works department. He says, based on past experience, he would need at least two to three more employees to manage the fleet if the department moved back to a pool system.

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Assigned Car Policy for the Dalton Police Department and the Whitfield County Sheriff’s Office

Dalton Police Chief Jason Parker and Whitfield County Sheriff’s Office Maj. John Gibson say that when officers who have assigned vehicles are off-duty they are not to use them for personal business. For instance, an officer or deputy shouldn’t use an official car to go on personal trips.

The Dalton Police Department bars anyone other than sworn law enforcement officers from riding in police vehicles without approval from the chief. Gibson says the sheriff’s office discourages allowing anyone other than law enforcement officers or county employees in the cars.